As we move into spring, our friends, neighbors and customers are beginning to think about their gardens. Why not consider including bee-friendly plants this year? Our friends at Partners for Sustainable Pollination have some wonderful suggestions, as well as a map of farms all around the U.S that focus on bee-friendly crops and plants.
Consider this, excerpted from the PSP Webs site:
The mysterious phenomenon of all the adult honey bees flying away from the hive, called colony collapse disorder (CCD), thus far does not appear to have a single cause. Researchers believe that colony collapse disorder (CCD) is likely the culmination of an overwhelming number of long term stresses including resistant varroa mites, old wax combs with disease and pesticides, reduced forage and reduced diversity of forage, poor bee nutrition, a depressed honey market, and increased movement of bees around the country that can spread disease and pests. The one common factor found in hives lost to CCD is nutritional stress due to lack of access to natural forage.
The one proven action that can be taken to improve honey bee health is to improve access to high quality and safe forage. Natural forage and nutrition are essential to good honey bee health and to their ability to cope with pests, pathogens and other stressors. Improving forage for honey bees is a proven method of contributing to their health and sustainability. While smaller scale plantings for native bees are helpful, larger scale landscape plantings are needed to adequately meet the nutritional needs of managed honey bee colonies. Special consideration must be given to encouraging plantings of late summer and fall blooming plants to help hives survive through the winter to the next blooming season.
Beekeepers do not own sufficient lands to provide forage for their colonies. They must seek permission from willing landowners to access suitable and safe areas to “pasture” their bees. Historically, beekeepers have had access to bee forage after their bees finish pollinating crops. Over the decades, a combination of forces including urbanization and changes in agricultural practices, such as monoculture and agrochemical choices, has greatly decreased the acreage and sites available to beekeepers, creating a major bee pasture deficit.
Happy spring!
